From The Living Church:
Posted on: February 5, 2009
There is no “schism” in the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams declared today at the close of the meeting of primates of the Anglican Communion in Alexandria, Egypt. The archbishop did acknowledge there was “deep division” within the Communion, but “what that will mean, we don’t know.”
Speaking as “presider of the primates’ meeting,” Archbishop Williams said the way forward for the Communion was to adhere to the Windsor process and work toward an Anglican Covenant. “Unless the covenant is robust and accepted,” he said, “the federal model is on the horizon” for the Anglican Communion.
While the Sudan, Zimbabwe, global warming, Gaza, and international finance were addressed by the primates during their four-day meeting in closed sessions, the principal topic of conversation was “ecclesiology,” Archbishop Williams said.
Speaking to the media at the close of the meeting, Archbishop Williams released two documents: “Deeper Communion: Gracious Restraint,” the communiqué from the meeting, and the Windsor Continuation Group (WCG) “Report to the Archbishop of Canterbury.” The primates’ letter had received the unanimous endorsement of the primates, he said. However, the WCG was a report prepared by a committee appointed by Archbishop Williams and presented by him to the primates as a resource document and was not submitted to a vote.
In his press conference, Archbishop Williams outlined three points he thought salient to the week’s discussions. The WCG report urged a change in the ecclesiological structures of the Communion that he said called for a “shift of focus” from a church perceiving itself to be “autonomous with accountability added on” to one where a church saw itself as “autonomous and accountable” to the wider mind of the Communion.
The WCG also urged a rethink of the relationship among the four instruments of Communion: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the primates’ meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council.
Archbishop Williams said at the “very end” of the WCG report there was a discussion of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). The report, he said, “recognizes the desire of people” leaving The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada for the ACNA “to be Anglican.” The WCG recommended a “professional mediation process” that included a “pastoral forum” and “pastoral visitor” for the divided churches in North America and Brazil.
Archbishop Williams said a mediation process had begun with some small success between the Diocese of Recife and the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil, and he hoped this would lead to an eventual reconciliation. Archbishop Williams also declined to call out of the Communion those who had quit The Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada for the ACNA, but said the new group “is not a province.”
The ACNA’s “institutional relationship” was “unclear” at this point, he said. He added that he hoped further dialogue would address this issue. However, he declined to answer a question about his “personal thoughts on the defrocking” of Canadian theologian J.I. Packer and Pittsburgh Bishop and ACNA leader Robert Duncan.
Pressed on what he would do about infractions of past agreed statements, Archbishop Williams said his authority was limited by canon law to the Church of England. “It remains true” the Anglican Communion has no organ “for discipline,” and this could only be remedied by a “Communion executive” or a “common canon law.” Until such structural mechanisms were in place, Archbishop Williams said there was little he could do.
The primates’ communiqué reiterated the call for a moratorium on cross-border violations of provincial sovereignty, rites for the blessing of same-gender unions, and the consecration to the episcopate of non-celibate gay clergy, and reaffirmed the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 as the standard statement on human sexuality for the Anglican Communion.
Archbishop Williams conceded that the “moratoria are holding rather badly on both sides” but added that they were not “completely ignored.” Cross-border violations and rites for gay blessings continued, but he said that the third moratorium had held as there were no new gay bishops. “We are trying to see the glass as half full and not half empty,” he explained.
(The Rev.) George Conger
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